Restoration
With the end of the Interregnum period and the return of Charles to the throne, the London theatres re-opened; in August 1660 Killigrew and Davenant received a patent to establish two theatre companies under royal patronage, the King's Company and the Duke's Company respectively — their famous "duopoly." Jolly had set up his own acting troupe by November 1660; on 24 December 1660, Jolly obtained his own patent from the King to run a company and theatre. Jolly's 1660 company was apparently made up mostly of personnel from William Beeston's last effort, and acted at first at the Cockpit Theatre. By March 1661 they were at the old Red Bull Theatre, where Samuel Pepys saw them perform William Rowley's All's Lost by Lust. They were working in the Salisbury Court Theatre by September of that year. Soon, though, they were back at the Cockpit; Jolly's company appears to have worked in whatever theatre was available to them. Their repertory probably included Marlowe's Doctor Faustus; Pepys and his wife saw a performance of that play at the Red Bull on 26 May 1662, though he found it "so wretchedly done that we were sick of it." (The 1663 edition of Faustus may reflect the version of the play that Jolly staged.)
Jolly maintained a toehold in London for two years, though the erstwhile rivals Davenant and Killigrew united in opposing his presence in the capital as strenuously as they could. On 1 and 29 January 1663, Jolly was granted new licenses (from Master of the Revels Sir Henry Herbert and from the King respectively) to play in any city in England except for London and Westminster; he led his troupe on a tour of provincial cities. Norwich became a de facto base of operations for Jolly's company, where they played at the King's Arms Inn; their repertory in this period appears to have included Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Cooke's Greene's Tu Quoque, Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, and the Fletcher/Shirley play The Night Walker among other works.
During this time, Jolly leased his London license to Killigrew and Davenant for £4 weekly. They falsely claimed that Jolly had sold them his license, which led to its revocation in July 1667. After 1667, Davenant and Killigrew were able to mollify Jolly somewhat by putting him in charge of "the Nursery", a school for the training of young actors.
Read more about this topic: George Jolly
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